It seems these absurdities will never end no matter how much we may shame irresponsible guardians or selfie-seekers. Now, we have the buffoon who, this week, visited Lisbon’s National Museum of Ancient Art (NMAA) and toppled an 18th century, Portuguese sculpture while posing for a photo with it. The polychrome wooden sculpture of the archangel Saint Michael fragmented after the man, a Brazilian tourist, tripped and backed into the gallery’s tall centerpiece. The depressing aftermath was captured by another visitor, Nuno Miguel Rodriges, who told Portuguese newspaper Público, “There were guards in the room at the time it happened … Everyone was incredulous at what had happened and there was a great silence.”
The museum posted a statement on its Facebook noting that the sculpture will undergo examination by its conservation team, which will release a technical report to the public as soon as possible. But the situation “is deplorable,” as NMAA’s deputy director José Alberto Seabra Carvalho told Portuguese daily Diário de Notícias. “The statue is very affected in the wings, in one arm and mantle. The damage is severe but reversible.” The museum will also consider installing a different plinth to display the work when it eventually returns to the gallery.
The museum did not name the culprit, but we did a little poking around, and the statue seems like a pretty popular selfie magnet this week …
Entrance to the Rossio train station in Lisbon prior to the selfie mishap (photo via Wikipedia)
Another day, another unnecessary, accidental damage of art. This most recent incident follows the utterly heedless decision of one unidentified tourist in Lisbon who scaled a life-size statue of a 16th-century Portuguese king at Rossio Railway Station to attain, of course, a selfie.
As Reuters first reported, the 24-year-old man climbed onto the pedestal of the stone figure of Dom Sebastião, which stood in a niche flanked by large, ornately decorated horseshoe-shaped arches at the station’s Neo-Manueline-style façade. The statue of Sebastião, who died in battle while on crusade against the kingdom of Morocco, then met its own tragic end, toppling to the ground and smashing. Designed by Portuguese architect José Luís Monteiro and completed in 1890, the station is a protected monument. It is unclear whether or not a selfie stick was involved in the statue’s destruction.
The selfie-seeker apparently tried to make a break for it, but police managed to take him into custody. He is currently awaiting trial.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is not the first time a quest for a selfie with art has ended in disaster: remember the young lad who hoisted himself onto a “Drunken Satyr” statue in Milan for a snapshot and consequently broke off one of its legs? And more recently, a German teenager’s ascent to the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza fortunately left no visible damage to the structure, but the stunt earned him a lifelong ban from Egypt.
Consider this tale from Lisbon your regular reminder to not use art as your personal climbing walls. And no, it’s still not okay to scale a priceless object even if you are a child.
